Daniel Levy puts forth a plausible outcome for Netanyahu out of the Gaza situation:

Netanyahu is much happier fighting this election on the terrain of national security than on issues of social justice, inequality, and being in bed with “swinish capitalism” as his critics are prone to brand him. Netanyahu can rely on his election rivals all lining up to support his military surge against Gaza, which has indeed been the case in the past 48 hours. Shelly Yachimovich (Labour leader) and Yair Lapid (leader of new YeshAtid party) have looked like they were auditioning for cabinet seats in Netanyahu’s next government, which is very possibly what the future has in store for them. Netanyahu has been noticeably cautious and limited in the goals he has set for this military action, in contrast to the grandiose ambitions that his predecessor Olmert claimed at the launching of operation Cast Lead in 2008. It is not unreasonable to assume that a preferred scenario for the Israeli Prime Minster has him giving some variation of the following speech, ideally within a relatively short time (in 48 to 96 hours perhaps):

“As Prime Minister of Israel I set out realistic goals for this operation, unlike my irresponsible predecessor. We have achieved in Operation Pillar of Defence six important goals in preserving Israel’s national security. First, while Gilad Shalit is back at home with his family, his captor, the arch terrorist al-Jabari, has met the same fate as Osama Bin Laden. Second, our deterrence has been restored. Every Hamas leader and terrorist in Gaza knows that they are within reach of the long arm of the IDF and that rocket fire on Israelis will not go unpunished. Third, while rocket fire against any Israeli target and certainly Tel Aviv is unacceptable, it is also something we knew was possible, but the threat has now been significantly diminished by our success in hitting the stockpiles of weapons accumulated in Gaza. That particular mission will continue. Fourth, and contrary to the childish scare-mongering in some of our media suggesting that Israel is now more isolated internationally, we have conducted this operation with firm Western backing. I have personally spoken to President Obama and Western leaders and appreciate their recognition of Israel’s right to self-defence. And this time there will be no internal committees of enquiry or scurrilous UN Goldstone commissions. Fifth, we have proven we can navigate the choppy waters of a newly destabilised Middle East while retaining our freedom of military action. And finally, and perhaps most important, we have maintained national unity at home and I thank the leaders of the other responsible Zionist parties for standing together as one.”

There are some additional wins Netanyahu would like to secure without necessarily including them in his victory speech. For instance, this operation will possibly postpone or at least reduce the significance of any vote on upgrading Palestine’s status at the UNGA. Even if the vote happens, and even if Abbas secures a few more ‘yeses’ against the backdrop of operation Pillar of Defence, Netanyahu can reassure the Israeli public that what matters is that the Western powers stood by Israel during this military operation. Netanyahu could be sending a signal to Iran that his own track record of being circumspect regarding major military strikes cannot be counted on. And finally, he may have shrunk the space for Olmert, Livni and others to enter the election race, especially if he can show that his operation achieved better results than their Operation Cast Lead.

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.

The American-Israeli relationship now resembles the sort of crazy co-dependency one sometimes finds in doomed marriages, where the more stubborn and unstable partner drags the other into increasingly delusional and dangerous projects whose disastrous results seem only to legitimate their paranoid outlook. If Mr Netanyahu manages to convince America to back an attack on Iran, it is to be hoped that the catastrophic consequences will not be used to justify the attack that led to them.

Mr Netanyahu thinks the Zionist mission was to give the Jewish people control over their destiny. No people has control over its destiny when it is at war with its neighbours. But in any case, that is only one way of thinking of the Zionist mission. Another mission frequently cited by early Zionists was to help Jews grow out of the "Ghetto mentality". Mr Netanyahu's gift to Mr Obama shows he's still in it.

One of the advantages of my injury is that it did not allow me much time on a computer to follow the AIPAC festival of allegiance (strangely reminiscent of allegiance ceremonies in Arab monarchies) in Washington. But this piece nails Netanyahu's responsibility for so much, it's worth reading in full.

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.

There on Capitol Hill, Netanyahu still has friends like Senator Chuck Schumer, who told a Jewish radio program that “One of my roles, very important in the United States Senate, is to be a shomer [guard]—to be a or the shomer Yisrael [guard of Israel]. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body." With friends like these wrapped around his little finger, no wonder Netanyahu’s forcible denunciations of international law were met with such rapturous approbation by Members of Congress who applauded his rejectionism dozens of times.

This bonhomie was punctuated only once during Netanyahu’s hour-long speech, when a lone and courageous activist—Rae Abileah—from CODEPINK, disrupted it. CODEPINK organized a series of events and protests—“Move Over AIPAC”—to coincide with the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last weekend. From the gallery, Abileah shouted “No more occupation, stop Israel[i] war crimes, equal rights for Palestinians, occupation is indefensible.”

Her protest was quickly shut down in a “hey rube” moment by AIPAC attendees in the gallery who assaulted and tackled her before she was hauled away by police, causing injuries to her neck and shoulders requiring hospitalization. At the same time, Members of Congress joined the AIPAC carnie thuggery by shouting down Abileah with boos before quickly resuming to feed out of Netanyahu’s hand.

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.

Probably the most significant take-away from the past few days of U.S.-Israeli dialog is to shed light on the true intentions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding peace with the Palestinians. Although Netanyahu finally allowed the phrase “Palestinian state” to pass his lips for the first time almost two years ago, this past week in Washington provided further confirmation of what had been apparent all along: that whatever conception Netanyahu may have of such a “state,” it is not a formula having any chance of becoming the basis for—to use Netanyahu's own words from his joint appearance with President Obama on Friday—“a peace that will be genuine, that will hold, that will endure,” or probably even what most of the rest of the world would consider a state. Netanyahu is smart enough to realize this, which is to say he is content to let the status quo endure indefinitely. Israel will maintain that status quo through brute force—military force within the territories, and political force in Washington.

Read the whole thing. This is what shows you there is no Israeli desire for peace, and the deeper reality is that this is the case whether Likud, Kadima or Labor is in power. With Netanyahu, you get it unvarnished — that's the difference.

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.

The Israelis marked by Netanyahu on the list did not donate to his primaries campaign. Those who agreed to donate are mainly American citizens, and few British and French people, including extreme rightists and people who got in trouble with the law.

According to estimates, 98% of the funds donated to Netanyahu came from abroad.

So basically, it was mostly Americans who got Netanyahu elected. Do check out Bibi's handwritten list of potential donors.

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.

Via Coteret, a great blog translating from the Hebrew media, this piece in today's Yediot Ahronot:

The lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip and permission for Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip freely through Israeli border crossings. These are the unequivocal demands that President Barack Obama is expected to make during his meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the White House in two weeks.

Moshe Yatom, a prominent Israeli psychiatrist who successfully cured the most extreme forms of mental illness throughout a distinguished career, was found dead at his home in Tel Aviv yesterday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. A suicide note at his side explained that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been his patient for the last nine years, had “sucked the life right out of me.”

“I can’t take it anymore,” wrote Yatom. “Robbery is redemption, apartheid is freedom, peace activists are terrorists, murder is self-defense, piracy is legality, Palestinians are Jordanians, annexation is liberation, there’s no end to his contradictions. Freud promised rationality would reign in the instinctual passions, but he never met Bibi Netanyahu. This guy would say Gandhi invented brass knuckles.”

[. . .]

Yatom was apparently working on converting his diary into a book about the Netanyahu case. Several chapters of an unfinished manuscript, entitled “Psychotic On Steroids,” were found in his study. The excerpt below offers a rare glimpse at the inner workings of a Prime Minister’s mind, at the same time as it reveals the daunting challenge Yatom faced in seeking to guide it to rationality:

Monday, March 8

“Bibi came by at three for his afternoon session. At four he refused to leave and claimed my house was actually his. Then he locked me in the basement overnight while he lavishly entertained his friends upstairs. When I tried to escape, he called me a terrorist and put me in shackles. I begged for mercy, but he said he could hardly grant it to someone who didn’t even exist.”

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.

✪ The first Islamic search engine? - The Majlis | About imhalal.com which filters haram links out of searches. Seems pretty useless to me but it's fun to keep on searching for dirty words, and if you try you'll see the site does not work very well.
✪ ei: Liberation, not a fictitious Palestinian "state" | Hassan Abunimah on the Fayyad plan and the alleged Obama outlines for peace, which he describes as including "international armed forces in most of the Palestinian "state"; Israeli annexation of large parts of East Jerusalem; that "All Palestinian factions would be dissolved and transformed into political parties"; all large Israeli settlements would remain under permanent Israeli control; the Palestinian state would be largely demilitarized and Israel would retain control of its airspace; intensified Palestinian-Israeli "security coordination"; and the entity would not be permitted to have military alliances with other regional countries." And of course no right of return.
✪ Israel PM vowed not to freeze settlements: minister
(AFP) | "AFP - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed not to freeze settlement construction in the West Bank, according to one of his ministers quoted on Wednesday."
✪ Brian Whitaker's blog | Trials of a Jordanian poet | One year for poet who used Quranic references in his love poetry, gets threats from MB, mufti calls him apostate.
✪ LedgerGermane: Rectum? Damn Near Killed 'Em! | Prince Muhammad bin Nayif's would-be killer had explosives stashed in rectum. Ouch.
✪ Quarante années de crimes | Ibn Kakfa on 40 years of the criminal Qadhafi regime, which "disappeared" many dissidents at home and abroad.
✪ Iraq's flawed media law | Brian Whitaker on the draft Iraqi media law, which resembles that of other Arab states.

As the always excellent Phil Weiss puts it, Bibi Netanyahu is on a roll. First he called David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel "self-hating Jews", and then, in a conversation with the German foreign minister, he said the West bank should not [edit, see comments] become "Judenrein", the Nazi word for "cleansed of Jews".

Asked how Germany's top diplomat responded to hearing the Nazi Holocaust term for areas "cleansed of Jews," the confidant said, "What could he do? He basically just nodded."

(Follow Phil's links for the details.)
Which brings Germans to mind. Sixty years after World War II, they still have to suffer, financially and politically, from crimes most of today's Germans had nothing to do with. It is among the most progressive countries in the world, yet when it comes to Middle Eastern diplomacy it must accept whatever Israel says or be subject to emotional and political blackmail. If you look at the recent internal EU talks about whether the advanced status process for Israel should be frozen in light of the Gaza War, they can't do the right thing (mind you they are not the only ones: Britain is also very bad in this regard). I remember talking with a Middle East hand at the German foreign ministry a few months ago, asking them what they thought they could do to push along the peace process. He looked at me and said, "We are Germany. Our hands are tied." Behind the scenes, they have some innovative ideas, breaking away from the Atlanticist (US-UK, pro-Israel) approach to peacemaking and in some respects more in line with the more enlightened European countries. But politically, they will immediately be subject to a campaign of abuse — after all if Ariel Sharon in 2004 dismissed France as having 1930s levels of anti-Semitism, imagine what fun the likes of Bibi would have with Germany.

the Israeli public is becoming less supportive of the settlers and more convinced that the growth of outlying settlements is a detriment to national security. So are many American Jewish lawmakers and communal leaders. They are saying what the current Israeli leadership needs to hear: There’s nothing natural, or acceptable, about “natural growth.”